Books Archives

11 December 2006Sam Harris is a God*
More than 50% of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who don't believe in God. 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious." "A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is...
26 May 2006How Would A Patriot Act?
If you want to keep up to date with the all the legal machinations of the Bush Administration and the twisted logic of his one-eyed defenders, there is no better place than Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory. Glenn's insightful commentary rooted...
15 June 2005The Lexus and the Olive Tree
I finally finished Tom Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which I had been reading for a few weeks now in fits and starts. I have mixed feelings about Tom Friedman's work. Sometimes I find his NYT columns to...
12 May 2005Science Made Simple
If you've been out of high school a long time, like more than 10 years, most of what Bill Bryson writes about in his magnum opus science survey A Short History of Nearly Everything will come as a revelation to...
06 April 2005Whatever a Man Never Has, He Never Misses
I just finished reading One Man's Wilderness, Sam Keith's presentation of Dick Proenneke's Alaskan Journals. I caught the PBS special, Alone in the Wilderness back in March, and quickly became enamored with the Proenneke world. I picked up the book...
04 January 2005The Da Vinci Code
Everyone I know has been reading The Davinci Code, so I finally borrowed my sister's copy to see what all the fuss was about. I was hooked quickly. Not because it's well written, because it's not. Not even because the...
05 October 2004Who's The Best Fighter Pilot You Ever Saw?
You're looking at him. I didn't really know Gordo Cooper, but I felt like I did. Almost everything I know about this man comes from reading Tom Wolfe'sThe Right Stuff and repeatedly watching the movie in which he was played...
26 July 2004The Company
"Our leaders act as their own intelligence analysts. And our agents in the field are afraid to tell their own leaders anything that contradicts the preconception of the leaders; even if we tell the handlers, they certainly won't put their...
13 July 2004Positively Fifth Street
There can no finer book to pick up in the middle of the TV coverage of Binion's WSOP. McManus's tales of how he parlayed his 4G advance from Harper's first to a seat at the WSOP Big Game and then...
01 July 2004Guilty About Fiction
I'm not exactly sure why I feel this way, but I feel guilty about reading fiction when I could spend the time reading non-fiction. I just picked up I, Robot, to reread the Asimov classic before the movie comes out...
28 June 2004I'll Tell You What This Means, Norm. No Size Restrictions and Screw the Limit.
Did anyone see former FBI consultant Paul Williams on Fox today Hawking his book Osama's Revenge? The basis of the book is that bin Laden has several mobile nuclear devices that he squirreled away from the former Soviet Union and...
11 November 2003Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same
I was sitting in a doctor's office in New York, waiting for my friend to get through his appointment so I picked up some magazines, amongst them Vanity Fair (the one with George Clooney on the cover) and was thumbing...
03 November 2003"American Psycho" Moment
I was wandering around the back alleys of the lower east side of Manhattan and I came across a little tapas bar called Suba which was tucked into a little nondescript building. The menu, posted behind glass in a brushed...
28 October 2003The Bible Code
There's a code in the bible that predicts every major event in world histroy from Jesus to 9/11 and everything in between, or so says Michael Drosnin in The Bible Code. The book has been around for years, it was...
25 September 2003Virent ova! Viret perna!
Mihi placent, O Pincerna! Virent ova! Viret perna! Dapem posthac non arcebo. Gratum tibi me praebebo. In the realm of the "really important news for former Classics students" comes the story that two professors from the University of Kentucky...
07 September 2003Souvenirs de Nancy
I'm fascinated by the lives led by other Peace Corps volunteers around the world. I scour the Internet, reading web logs, journals and all sorts of info about PCVs. I've read most of the stories in the officially published...
12 August 2003Cleopatra's Sister
I really enjoyed this book, although I was laughing at it initially. The book is divided into two parts. The first has three types of chapters that alternate: those that follow Howard's life, those that follow Lucy's life, and...
07 August 2003Balzac and the Little Seamstress
This book, Balzac and the Little Seamstress, is a little treasure. It was such a surprise find. One of friends had it on her shelf and I read it one morning. It's less than 200 pages, so it's a...
22 July 2003A Consipracy of Paper
My cousin Lisa just sent me this book and it flew through it. It's sort of a historical, financial, thriller of a murder mystery set in 18th century London with a Jewish subplot, if you can believe that. One...
11 June 2003Books Cost Too Much
There's a story online this morning about how even the highly antiicipated release of the new Harry Potter opus from J.K. Rowling is not going to be enough to pull U.S. bookstores out of their financial slump. I don't like...
07 June 2003Army of Fools
The Tahitian Princess pulled back into Apia Harbor this morning disgorging slow moving tourists all over the island. I met one couple out in front of MD's Big Fresh supermarket by the entrance to the harbor. They were a meaty,...
05 June 2003Snow Falling on Cedars
I just rented Snow Falling on Cedars last night. (The video store next to the Peace Corps office has over 2000 DVDs in stock.) I wasn't expecting much. I read the book a few weeks ago and it is one...
21 April 2003The Mosquito Coast
I'm not saying all inventions are good. But you notice dangerous inventions are always unnatural inventions. You want an example? I'll give you the best one I know, Cheese spread that you squirt out of an aerosol can onto your...
17 April 2003Freedom Ain't Cheap
Ok. First piece of news. Ralph "Sonny" Barger, legendary founder of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club is not a functional illiterate. In fact, get this, he actually wrote a book about his life. Well, to be honest, Sonny probably didn't...
11 April 2003My Uncle Oswald
I am beginning, once again, to have an urge to salute my Uncle Oswald. I mean, of course, my Uncle Oswald Hendryks Cornelius deceased, the connoisseur, the bon vivant, the collector of spiders, scorpions, and walking-sticks, the lover of opera,...